No matter who you are, before you judge the wickedness of others, you had better remember this: you are also without excuse, for you too are guilty of the same kind of things! [and so] you condemn yourself.

Romans 2:1-2 (TPT)

It has been a long time since I realized the gospel is beautiful. It is like a Christmas present from a friend I am sure I have deeply offended. Except that the friend is God Himself, and the offense is not imagined but real. But he has sent me a Christmas gift anyway, the most extravagant gift I could imagine.

There is however a science to all of this, and my lack of understanding of the precision involved in the science of grace is what has prevented me from seeing how beautiful it is.

God is the author of all we see in nature, and one of the things we see in nature is a God whose way of dealing with the world is precise and, if I may use the term, unforgiving. Gravity, for example, does not care if you have good reason to step off a cliff. Neither does a hot stove if you touch it. The consequence of these things are unyielding, and the same is true when we violate the principles of God’s moral law.

The apostle Paul declares in the very passage I have quoted, “We know God’s judgment falls upon those who practice [any form of wickedness].” So we cannot escape the consequence of sin any more than we can escape the consequence of stepping off a cliff or touching a hot stove. It is science. We may not like it and think it is unkind of God to have created the world this way if we wish, but in the end it does not matter. It is how the world is. (And between us and God, God probably gets to decide how his world should be.)

Now because of the Cross, we are no longer under the law. But I mention the precise and unforgiving nature of God’s law because God’s grace is equally precise and, in a way, equally unforgiving. Not unforgiving in the sense God is withholding forgiveness, of course, but in the sense that there are precise rules that govern his grace. For example, God’s grace must be received as a gift. If you attempt to earn it, you will fail to open it. And if you prevent others from opening it, you will prevent yourself from opening it, also. Religious performance and judgment will deny you the grace God has otherwise freely made available to you.

We may think Jesus going to the Cross was God’s way of saying he no longer cares about sin – or anything for that matter. That God is not really a rule-follower after all. But this idea is really a reflection of our modern age, not God. We think nothing really matters and God feels the same way. But the Cross demonstrates the very opposite of this. It is evidence God cares so much about sin that he sent his only Son to die in our place. It was an exchange in conformance with his precise and unforgiving nature – unforgiving in the sense sin had to be punished. As Romans puts it, “There was only one possible way for God to give away his righteousness and still be true to both his justice and his mercy—to offer up his own Son.”

I mention this because if we think the Cross is about God not caring about stuff, we will think he does not really care about religious striving or judgment either. In fact, we will think God really does not care about much of anything that we do, that the main take-away of the Cross is that he loves us and is not too concerned with what we with our lives. And so we spend our days stepping off cliffs of judgment or touching hot stoves of religious striving, wondering why our lives are filled with so much pain, not reflecting the fullness of all he has promised. Of course he still loves us, but by our actions and attitude, we are alienating ourselves from his grace.¹

But once we understand the precise nature of God’s grace, we are able to see his gift for the beautiful thing it is. It is, after all, a gift. But more than that, it is an invitation to leave the heaviness and destruction of a life of stepping off cliffs and touching stoves, and instead to step into a life of Christmas presents every day, not only for us but for everyone. It opens up all sorts of possibilities, for we are truly blameless before him. And if he has not spared his own Son, will he not now give us all things?²

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Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

1. Galatians 5 ↩︎
2. Romans 8:32 ↩︎